


Origami & Tea

by QueridaMyDear



Category: A Matter of Life and Death (Webcomic)
Genre: Anguish anguishes, But they have a tea party and fold origami, F/M, I don't really know how I ship them, Love and Anguish are friends, Love loves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 10:57:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16303856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueridaMyDear/pseuds/QueridaMyDear
Summary: Love invites Anguish over for a tea party, and to teach her how to fold origami.





	Origami & Tea

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a one word prompt. Then it got long.

Anguish is sitting on the couch in Love’s living room, too frightened to move. Everything around him is so _cute_. And so _breakable_. He hasn’t budged since he showed up at the front door and she invited him in to sit. He’s barely even breathing. He’s terrified he might tear the heart-shaped lace doily on her coffee table, or trip while standing up and shatter the glass in her framed picture of herself and Death. Or maybe, somehow, he might leave a stain on her pink couch. His clothes are clean, but the fear of accidentally staining the fabric remains. How would he even do it? He has no idea, but he can’t stand the thought. 

Love had invited him over for a tea party, and the excitement of getting to talk to her again outweighed his general unwillingness to leave his home. He knew she had tea parties often with Death, but this time she’d invited Anguish. Just him. Just the two of them. Alone. The thought has his heart racing more than it usually is, his cheeks warm, a smile creeping onto his face. She’s in the kitchen making the tea, and he wants to help, it’s only polite. But he’s too scared to leave the couch. Too scared he might break something, ruin something, and make her hate him. That thought fills him with more dread than he’s ever felt in his life, and his stomach feels like a black hole eating him from the inside out.

“Ready! Let’s go into the garden!” She announces herself from the kitchen and marches out carrying a tray full of cupcakes, a Cupid behind her pushing a tea cart with the tea pot and cups. Anguish feels rotten for not helping her, but he’s immediately relieved he didn’t have to try to navigate her small, adorable, highly pink kitchen. 

And just as soon as he felt relieved, now he feels sad he missed out on the experience of helping her out in the kitchen. Everything he’s had the chance to do with her, talking, gardening, walking, chatting, all of those experiences are treasured memories. But rather than having a wonderful memory of helping her measure out tea leaves and filling the kettle with water, all he’ll remember is sitting scared on the couch. He resolves to help her clean up when they’re done. The kitchen is small and he’s scared, but… It’s worth it to push through the fear to spend time with her.

Anguish very carefully stands from the couch and scoots away from the coffee table, leaving her house through the back door, happy to have more space to move around in her vast garden area.

Love is setting out plates and silverware on the table perpetually left out in the garden, putting one plate in front of her seat and one in front of Anguish’s seat. Anguish hurries over, nervously standing near her, completely ready to push in her seat when she’s ready to sit. He’s already been a beastly guest and he simply cannot make her suffer through any more of his rudeness! 

“Thank you, Cupid!” Love chirps at her assistant, who is pouring tea into each cup and setting them before both plates, having already set out Love’s meticulously-decorated and heavily frosted cupcakes on a pink cupcake stand. The Cupid nods and stands back to wait for Love to call on her.

Love moves to her seat and sits down, surprised when Anguish rushes up and holds onto the back of her seat, scooting her forward until her legs are under the table.

“Oh! Thank you, Anguish!” She smiles at him and the light of her smile is overwhelming.

“Y… You’re welcome.” He lurches to his seat and scoots in, dazed by her sweet smile. When he comes to, he observes the china with dawning terror. They look so dainty. So delicate. The china is a fine white with exquisite roses hand painted on, the edges lined with gold. The saucer the cup rests on is painted to match, same as the larger plate in front of him. He can’t bring himself to touch the cup. It’s lovely and his hands are already shaking. He wants to try the tea, it smells divine, but every time he lifts a hand toward the cup, he freezes, seized by terror. 

“U-Um… M-Miss Love,” He murmurs, voice small.

“It’s just Love, silly. What is it?” 

“Could I maybe perhaps have a… I mean, would it be possible t-to have a…” He can’t finish the request. He feels so silly. Who in the hell drinks hot tea from china with a straw.

“A what?” Love blinks, confused. She knows from experience that some of Anguish’s attempts to communicate simply will not be finished verbally, and she must rely on context clues to figure out what he’s trying to say. She looks to the tea cup and sees his shaking hands, which he yanks away to tuck into his lap. He’s scared of everything, so he must be scared of something. Is it the tea? The cup? It must be the cup. She realizes now that she gave him a fragile cup, and he’s a bundle of nerves even on his best day. Her cute breakable cups aren’t helping at all.

“I’m so sorry, Anguish! I wasn’t thinking! Would you like a different cup? Maybe a… A straw?”

“Oh, a straw would be lovely, thank you!” He has no idea how she figured that out when he provided no hints other than his standard hesitancy and shaking. She’s amazing. 

Love sends a Cupid into the house and she returns with a pink straw, presenting it to Anguish. The sheer amount of personalization Love puts into her environment is impressive. Right down to the straws. But he adores every tiny heart in her house, every throw pillow, every pink surface. It's all so unapologetically _her_. 

Anguish drops the straw into his tea, sipping carefully. It’s delightfully warm and biting, spiced with cloves and cinnamon and orange peel. 

“It’s delicious.” He assures her, and takes another sip. He had seen her collection of tea from where he’d perched on the couch, all sorted into matching glass jars and lined up perfectly on a shelf. This didn’t taste quite like any tea he’d had before. Had she made it herself? 

“Did… Did you make the tea?”

“Yes, before we came out here. Remember? I was in the kitchen.” Love is endlessly patient and pleasant with him but he feels exhausted with himself for not being clearer and wasting her time asking questions the wrong way. He should have stopped and thought it through before speaking! Now he was wasting hers and his time with his nonsense! 

“I mean the… The blend. Did you… Is it yours?” Oh no, that wasn’t clear at all, was it? She’s going to misunderstand him _again_ and he’ll have to either ask her a third time or just go on with the rest of his life never knowing if the tea he’s drinking was mixed by her or if she bought it somewhere. He knows damn well he can’t handle the agony of asking her a third time and risking the possibility of being misunderstood for a fourth time, he’d rather run away right now. So his only obvious choice is to stand up this instant and run away forever.

“Oh! Yes, I made it myself!” Love answers with a bubbly little smile, “Do you like it?”

Anguish almost feels relief. He made himself clear, she understood him!

“I-I do, it’s delicious!” He’s nearly giddy, hands still shaking in his lap, though now they’re shaking from the thrill of complimenting her and the warmth that rushes over his heart as she accepts his compliment with a delighted giggle. He sips his tea through the straw, heart still racing, though now it’s hard to place this emotions. There’s less dread than usual. There’s joy accompanying his pounding heart, and he realizes, confused, that he’s excited.

“Cupcake?” Love asks, motioning toward her small cake stand filled with cupcakes. 

“Yes, please.” He nods, reaching over to take one himself when he notices Love already has one in hand, and is holding it out for him. Anguish gently turns his hand palm up to accept the cupcake, eyes trained right on it as Love sets it on his hand. She sits back down in her seat, skirts poofing out, and starts eating her own cupcake. She’s halfway/one bite through her cupcake, frosting on her lips, when she realizes Anguish hasn’t moved and is sitting frozen with the cupcake perched on his hand over the middle of the table.

“Anguish?” She asks, her voice surprising him enough that he jumps, the cupcake falling off his hand. Time exists in slow motion for Anguish for the next few seconds as he screams in his own mind, watching the cupcake twirl down, down, down, and land frosting first on the tablecloth.

In the next second he’s up and out of his chair, running out of the garden and around to the front of the rose bush fence in front of her house, where he drops down to hide and tremble and panic. He dropped a cupcake. It landed right on her pristine tablecloth, he finally did it, he stained something of hers! He ruined not only the tablecloth but the cupcake also, and the entire tea party as well! He could never see her again. She’d be furious. She’d worked so hard on the cupcakes and the tablecloth was so white - well it _had_ been, until Anguish showed up and ruined things, as usual!

“Anguish?” He hears Love suddenly beside him and he falls to his side, trying to scramble away.

“I-I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, I’ll clean the tablecloth, I’ll make new cupcakes and I’ll frost them all myself!” He begs, getting onto his hands and knees. What if she really doesn’t want to see him again? What if she tells him to leave? What if he never gets to spend time with her again? Usually his panic is directed at himself, blaming himself, berating himself, and it’s the same this time, but there’s also an overwhelming fear that she really will hate him and he’s ruined this friendship forever.

“What are you talking about? It’s just a cupcake.” She holds out a hand and he stares at it for a moment. Finally he realizes she has no intention of slapping him, she wants to help him stand up. He takes her tiny hand in his and gets himself to his feet, happy to pretend along with her that she was able to help him stand. She’s so small but he feels so much smaller than her, ashamed of his mistake.

“But… You worked so hard on it. And your tablecloth is ruined.” He feels he’s only hurting himself now by reminding her of his sins, but she just shakes her head, shrugs.

“It’s not ruined. The cupcake and the tablecloth are fine. The frosting is on the tablecloth, yes, but the rest of it is edible, and the rest of the cupcakes still have frosting on them. The tablecloth just needs to be washed is all, I’ve spilled lots of stuff on it, oh and this one time when Death was over, he knocked over the entire teapot and spilled black tea all over the tablecloth _and_ my dress. So if you think you're the lord of destruction, you need to catch up to him first.” Love takes his hand very firmly in hers and walks him back to the table, the fallen cupcake still upside down.

“And sit!” Love makes him sit and tries to push his chair in, but he’s too heavy. 

“I need to push your chair in-” Anguish tries to stand and Love very energetically and dramatically stomps a foot down on the grass. 

“Sit!” She commands, and Anguish plops into his seat, scooting himself in. Love picks up the cupcake and scoops up the frosting in a napkin, handing the napkin to a Cupid. She then picks up a fresh cupcake and puts it on Anguish’s plate, and returns to her seat. 

Anguish gazes down at the cupcake, with its heart patterned cup and the heart-shaped sugar decoration perched in the perfect frosting. She wasn’t mad. Not at all. He stole a glance at her and saw she was on the second and final bite of her own cupcake, her cheeks full like a squirrel. She looked as if it wasn’t even irritating her in the least.

He feels calmer, somehow. She’d brought him back to the party herself, she wanted him here, she forgave him, even though the frosting smeared on the tablecloth was staring at him, trying to taunt him with his grievance. Somehow, it didn’t bother him. This… Felt nice. The smell of tea and cupcakes, the sound of Love’s skirts shifting as she grabbed herself two more cupcakes, the odd sensation of his hands not shaking. He felt good.

“Oh. Oh dear.” He murmurs. He’s never felt like this before. This isn’t normal?

“What is it?” Love asks, licking frosting off her fingers.

“M-My heart isn’t racing. I’m not panicking?” He’s so confused, so distraught while reporting his lack of anxiety that Love can only giggle.

“You’re relaxed! That’s all.” She feels extremely proud that she managed to calm him down, even for a bit. 

“Oh. Is… Is this what everyone else feels all the time?” His breathing has slowed, his thoughts aren’t swarming like bees in his skull, he isn’t imagining all the things that could go wrong within the next few seconds.

“Not all the time, no. But I’m relaxed right now too!” Love smiles at him and his heart races again, not from fear, but because he loves to see her smile.

“This… This isn’t too bad.” For the first time… He feels peace. The moment is short lived, however, as Anguish notices a raindrop plunk into his tea.

“Oh!” A raindrop falls on Love’s nose and she turns her face to the sky. The clouds are gathering and blocking out the sun, a crack of thunder breaking overhead.

“Oh dear! Cupids!” Love urgently calls her assistants. Those that were standing nearby quickly start gathering up the teacups and pots and load them onto the tea cart. A few more Cupids hurry from inside her house and rush the cupcakes inside before they get wet, the rain coming down very suddenly. Anguish is quick to remove his jacket and hold it over Love’s head as they hurry into her house, the rain slamming down hard.  
“Life must be upset.” Love sighs, hands pressed against a window as she gazes out at the garden. The tea party had been rescued except for the tablecloth. At least the rain would wash out the frosting from Anguish’s dropped cupcake.

“Can you feel it if he is?” Love whirls around to ask Anguish, skirts flying as she turns, her head tilted curiously. Anguish is brushing raindrops from his coat and threading his arms through the sleeves.

“I can.” He nods. He feels everyone’s anguish at all times, the gods included. Feeling the anguish of every human at once is a lot to handle, but feeling the anguish of the gods is quite another. Life’s anguish is still another thing. No one feels quite as strongly as Life, and his misery feels like voices screaming inside Anguish’s skull. He doesn’t know exactly what is causing Life’s distress, but for once, just this one time, all he wants to do is block it out. Just this once he wants to forget who he is and what he’s in charge of and just be and enjoy this moment with Love. And then there’s a small hand on his, and Love is smiling up at him, and the warmth he feels when he’s with her is enough to shield him. Just this once.

“Let’s pick up where we left off.” Love shows Anguish to the coffee table, where the Cupids have set up the tea party again, sans tablecloth. They sit side by side on the couch and Love refills Anguish’s teacup, exploding with giggles when he leans all the way over to pop his straw into the teacup and have a sip. 

“I’m so sorry, I forgot about the straw, we can move to the dining table if you’d like.” Love offers, her face alight with laughter at how silly Anguish looks with his long limbs, hunkered over to use a straw in a cup on the coffee table. 

“Thank you, I’m fine.” He shakes his head, laughing softly along with her. He can imagine what a sight he is with his straw. But despite his newfound calm feelings, he’s still anxious about handling her teacups.

“Oh, yes! Did you bring the origami paper?” Love asks very suddenly, clapping her hands together as she recalls having asked him to bring paper along. He folds the most amazing things with the finest, most intricate folds. She’s watched him make all kinds of origami, from butterflies to birds, foxes to turtles, and each creation seems more amazing and detailed than the last. Her very favorite thing Anguish has made is a full bouquet of origami roses sitting in a vase on her shelf. He hasn’t admitted it was him; she found them by her front door without a note, but there was no one else it could have been. And the way he got so flustered when he first noticed them on her shelf during a past visit only proved it further. 

“I did.” He nods, pulling a fresh package of paper from his coat pocket. He had visited Earth specifically to buy new paper exactly for this party, wanting nice, high quality paper to impress her with. Anguish opens the packet and slides out a sheet of paper for himself and one for Love, pushing it over to her.

“What do you want to try first?” 

“I don’t know… What’s a good place to start?” She’d like to jump right in and fold elegant roses and magnificent dragons like Anguish can, but she doesn’t really know the first thing about his hobby except that he folds paper and can somehow make acorns and squirrels and 

“Perhaps a frog?” Anguish suggests. It isn’t the easiest place to start, but he’s pretty sure she’ll feel the end result was worth the struggle. And he’s there to show her what to do and correct her folds. Love nods and sets her hands on her paper, eyes on Anguish’s hands. He feels his nerves spike suddenly. Talking about showing her how to fold was one thing, and now that he’s actually about to talk her through the process, he’s suddenly very, very nervous. He knows what to do, but what if he’s a terrible teacher? What if she has no idea what he means? What if her frog looks like a goat, will it be his fault?

“Anguish.” Love gently prods his forearm, noticing he hasn’t moved in over thirty seconds. She nudges at his arm until he slowly comes back to himself. “Don’t be nervous. If anything, I should be nervous! I’ve never done this before! If it’s too much, you can just fold it without speaking and I’ll follow along.”

He’s so grateful for her. She’s so accommodating of all his odd behaviors, and never once makes fun of him or teases him. She’s nothing but understanding and supportive and above all, patient. Her kindness helps him find his words as he starts to fold. 

“S-Start like this.” Anguish carefully folds the corners of his sheet of origami paper toward the opposite ends and smooths out the fold, making it as flat as he can manage. He turns to Love, watching her study his motions and the first fold. His folds are always precise and perfect, and she has no idea how he did it. Her folds weren't quite as even as his were, but she was doing her very best. There’s a look of intense concentration on her face as she folds her paper, making the opposite ends meet, her eyebrows furrowed as she tries to measure the fold before actually making it. 

Anguish smiles as she curls her bottom lip under her teeth, very slowly and carefully making her first fold.

“Oh, the ends are uneven!” She whines, pouting at her paper. The ends don’t match up. Her eyes fall on the absolutely immaculate fold of Anguish’s paper. The ends are perfect, the fold precise.

“It’s okay. You’re just starting, that’s all. You just need to practice.” Anguish’s folds had looked even worse when he first started. The agony of even doing one fold had taken forever to overcome. He’d worried and panicked about wasting the paper with bad folds and convinced himself it would come out terribly no matter how hard he tried or how much he practiced. But over the years, his panic had subsided and his folds got better, and he learned more and more intricate folds. He’d never dreamed anyone would take an interest in his hobby, let alone ask him to teach them. He could see the same frustration on Love’s face that had been on his when he first started, though he hoped she wasn’t as panicked as he had been. He doesn’t ever want her to feel that way.

“Now, open it up and fold this side against the center halfway down.” It’s remarkable to him how he can speak slowly and clearly, and most importantly, calmly, when he’s with her. He’s still nervous with her, of course. He’s scared he’ll say the wrong thing and upset her, or say something that will make her laugh at him. But she’s never mad at him, and she never laughs at him, not when he fell into her rose bush and got stuck with thorns all over, not when he hides around the corner of her house instead of at the front door. She always smiles at him and forgives him, and leads him gently by the hand, and helps him. 

“Show me again?” She asks, eyes focused on his hands. He unfolds the paper and shows her where it’s folded, and where the edges need to meet. Love nods one short energized little nod and returns to her paper, very carefully copying what he showed her. This fold is much more accurate and her eyes light up, a small gasp passing her lips.

“Very good. Now, the next fold goes like this.” Anguish carefully marches her through the rest of the folds until they’re both finished, two little folded frogs sitting before them.

“They’re so cute! Mine actually looks alright!” Love is extremely pleased with herself, considering how little experience she has with origami.

“And now for the best part.” Anguish is excited to show her this part. He presses a finger down on the back of the frog, making it jump across the table.

“It jumps!” Love gasps, hands over her mouth. She quickly presses down on hers and watches it sail across the table, landing on Anguish’s frog. “How cute!”

Anguish happily watches her gather both frogs up and line them up side by side, pressing on both to make them hop at the same time, their paths colliding as they crash together and bounce backward from each other, landing upside down on the table. Love picks them up and lines them up again, thoroughly amused as she presses them down again and they both jump up, Anguish’s perfectly folded frog sailing straight into his teacup with a small splash.

“Oh no!” Love gasps, her hands clapped over her mouth in alarm and worry. She fishes the frog out of Anguish’s teacup, but it’s already soggy with tea and dripping on the coffee table. A Cupid swoops in, cloth at the ready, and wipes off the table as another removes Anguish’s teacup to fetch a fresh, clean cup.

“I’ve ruined it… You worked so hard!” Love looks distraught with the wet origami frog cradled in the palms of her hands, and Anguish can feel her sorrow. It penetrates the warm, loving feel she gives off and makes it cold and grey. It feels how he usually feels, when his head is swarming with irrational fears and wild conclusions. He doesn’t want her to feel that way. He sets a heavy hand on her small shoulder and she turns her face up toward his, her eyes shining with the onset of tears.

“It’s okay. I can make another one. Besides, water is a frog’s natural habitat. It only makes sense it jumped into the tea.”

“You made a joke!” Love is so surprised she forgets her own anguish, her eyes newly alight with surprise and joy and relief. Her warm, welcoming aura returns, chasing away her sadness. He truly doesn’t care about the frog itself. Watching her smile and giggle for those few moments when she was making the frogs hop around had been worth the time it took to fold the frog.

Anguish pulls out a fresh sheet of paper as a Cupid serves him a fresh cup of tea and drops a straw in it. He begins the first fold and Love grabs another sheet for herself to follow along again, wanting to learn to fold it better this time. Anguish folds slowly to allow her to watch and mimic him and it occurs to him that for just a moment they had switched roles, with Anguish comforting her and reassuring her as she panicked over nothing. Was that how she felt when he got so upset, he wondered? That it was so little, so small a thing to get so upset about? He was happy he had been able to show her the same patience and understanding that she showed him, and help her like she always helped him.


End file.
